Featuring a bat and a chameleon in desperate need of pants.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/40171/yooka-laylee-details-announced-by-playtonic-games
The game previously known as Project Ukulele now has a title, protagonists and a price for its Kickstarter backers.
Yooka-Laylee, the project announced a few months ago by the ex-Rare staff at Playtonic Games, is a 3D platformer starring Yooka the chameleon and Laylee the bat. Yooka can use his tongue as a grappling hook, while Laylee can fire sonic blasts and fly short distances.
The promised Kickstarter campaign will begin May 1st, and the game tier will be $15 or £10 with extras including a soundtrack and "64-bit" physical edition available. The game is scheduled for the Wii U, but how quickly the game comes will depend on the success of the crowdfunding project.
Playtonic Games's website has also updated, declaring itself "the home of Yooka-Laylee and googly eyes" and offering additional screenshots and video.
I never back these things, but I may check the game out if it releases on Wii U.
On a separate note, I wonder if Nintendo ever considered tracking down as many former Rare "free agents" and unofficially reforming Rare. Nintendo has always valued a company's talent over IPs. Nintendo hasn't had a major development presence in Europe since letting Rare go. It could always use more development houses around the world.
I'm going to say it since no one else seems to want to- but Nintendo probably never hunted down Ex-Rare employees because their games were always subpar representations of what Nintendo knew they could do better.I admittedly was never particularly fond on Rare's games. They often played like worse Nintendo games, not necessarily bad, just worse. At the same time, Nintendo could certainly use more software output. That said, Nintendo could do a lot worse than hiring people who made worse versions of its own games and occasionally games it would likely never make.
"Spiritual successor" type games like this get made all the time without the rights to the original. It's not using anything MS owns the rights to, it's just making something that's really similar, so making a legal case against it would be pretty tough. Since they themselves seem to have had no urge to revisit it and the game's coming to Xbox One anyway I doubt they care.
Lets all keep in mind Mickey Mouse is in existence because Walt Disney couldn't retain the rights to his creation Oswald the Rabbit. So he made a ripoff of Oswald.
